CAIRO — Registration for candidacy in Egypt's first post-uprising presidential election closed on Sunday, amid last-minute twists and turns that have shaken the political race.
The bells tolled on Saturday as tearful Christians crushed past the Cairo cathedral's gate hours after Pope Shenuda III's death, to get a glimpse of the man they called "father" in an uncertain time for the Egyptian minority.
WASHINGTON — The United States Tuesday praised Egypt's decision to lift a decades-old state of emergency and hand power to the parliament as "major steps toward the normalization of political life."
The ex-head of the UN nuclear watchdog and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday he would not run for the Egyptian presidency, saying there is still no real democracy in the country.
Egyptians are voting on Tuesday in the final round of a landmark post-revolution election that has propelled Islamist movements into the centre stage of politics.
Egyptian police raided more than a dozen offices belonging to local and foreign rights groups on Thursday, as part of an investigation into alleged illicit foreign funding, an official statement said.
